NASA Guided Parachute for Drone Safety

As Lead Research Associate at NASA Langley's Aerospace Academy, I had the opertunity to lead and work with a team of 12 student
Mechanincal, Electrical, and Aerospace Engineers and Physiscists to research challenges brought to us by the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

Of the several projects we undertook my main focus was on the development of a kinetic energy reduction device to be mounted on drones flying over populated areas.
The NASA UAS office tasked the team to reduce the kinetic energy of a 75-pound drone falling from 400 ft down from 30,000 ft-Ib to 58 ft-Ib.

The full process from problem definition, initial research, and trade studies to design, protoptyping, testing, and documetation was conducted in a compressed 8-week period.

  • Airbags, auto-rotation, landing gear, and crumple zones were all considered for kinetic energy reduction. Since our goal was safely reducing kinetic energy and the protection of soft humans, we decided that none of those were practical with the possible exception of auto-rotation, the method used by full-sized helicopters. This would, however, require a redesign or replacement of all motors on the drone and was not a bolt-on solution.

  • Deployable drone parachutes exist, but are generally for the salvageability of the drone. Our design allows the steering of an otherwise falling drone, away from people, and sensitive infrastructure like power lines and roadways.

  • The small-scale prototype being tested in the video to the left is demonstrating controllability. It is dropped from the top of an aircraft hangar (approx. 80ft) into a stable glide, circles to the left, then the right bleeding off energy (as commanded by remote control) and then attempts to flair for a soft landing at the end.

  • A scaled-up version of this design would be attached to a larger drone, already equipped with onboard sensors for autonomous flight. These sensors would be used to see and avoid obstacles along the flight path, and use algorithms already developed by NASA for failing drones like safe2ditch to select a location to land.